Hold off on Whitehead house demolition

Published 6:42 pm, Thursday, April 17, 2014

Fairfield town officials should issue an emergency order to postpone demolition of the Gustave Whitehead house at 184 Alvin St. for 60 days and give historians and state officials time to consider ways to save it.

And if the declaration by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and the state legislature last year that they believe Whitehead was the first person to fly is worth anything more than the paper it was written on, they, too, should get involved in this case.

Just to recap, Whitehead is credited by no less a source than Jane's All the World's Aircraft, the bible of the aviation industry, with having flown a powered, heavier-than-air, controlled flight in 1901, two years before the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, an event that has been unquestionably enshrined in American history with at least partial boost from a suspect contract between the Wright heirs and the Smithsonian, where the Wright brothers plane is on display.

The contract allows the Smithsonian no leeway whatsoever in the discussion of who may actually have been the first to fly, lest the museum lose the right to display the aircraft.

Evidence has mounted, however, in recent years supporting the Whitehead claim.

If it can be shown that the little bungalow in the Tunxis Hill section of Fairfield is 100 years old, the structure would granted a 60-day reprieve from the wrecker's ball. Town records show nothing of the house until 1918, putting it four years outside the protective window.

Understandably, the new owner of the house, developer Gary Tenk of Stratford intends to tear the deteriorated structure down and build something new. Legally, he could demolish the house on Monday. And whatever the outcome of this contretemps, he should not have to bear any financial burden.

But there is a potentially significant public interest in this structure, even if it's not where Whitehouse was living when he flew.

The issue now is the construction date. Local historian Melanie Marks, founder of CT House Histories LLC, has managed to move the needle backwards, uncovering records of a mortgage that the Whiteheads- Gustave and his wife, Louisa -- got in January 1915 for the Fairfield property. The mortgage documents say "buildings" stand on the property.

Unless the house was built during the days right after the first of the year, there would seem to be a reasonable possibility that the house was built in the fall of 1914, qualifying the structure for at least a temporary reprieve.

That possibility is certainly reasonable enough to put demolition off for two months while a thorough title search and vetting of records and contemporary newspaper reports is conducted.

It seems a small step when you consider that when the dust clears on this issue of "First in Flight" this Whitehead house could emerge someday as a significant American landmark.